“No sales from my E-Commerce store but my traffic is decent, what do I do?”

“No sales from my E-Commerce store but my traffic is decent, what do I do?”

For anyone who wants to make a living from E-Commerce, you’ll likely run into the above problem more than once. Sadly, having a lot of traffic is not a clear indicator of consistent business performance. If you invest a lot of money into getting traffic but you lack any kind of sales conversions, there’s a problem somewhere along the line. In this article, we’ll try to get to the bottom of the problem that you face.

The problem with high traffic but no sales is the fact it can be such a wide range of issues. With so many frustrating problems that you may be facing, you might feel like you’ve exhausted all of the available options. Luckily enough, you can get over this with a bit of planning and perseverance.

So, let’s start with looking at what could resolve your problem here!

Starting Slowly

First off, take a deep breath. Take a week at least to look over it all in detail and see where you are going wrong. Many people wind up going on wild goose chases, changing many small things without waiting for any kind of feedback. Change one part of your process, wait a while to see the feedback, and start again. The best way to do this is with A/B testing– so change one page to see if it starts converting more compared to the rest.

Don’t try and change too much at once; it can make it very challenging indeed to correct the issue at hand. If you try to make too many adjustments and something works, it’s hard to know what actually worked. Then you’re back to square one, and you haven’t learned anything.

Check out your traffic stats first and foremost. Are they being reported correctly? Are they recording your own visits to the website, for example? Start off looking at Google Analytics, too; the answer to your frustration might be that your traffic isn’t as much as you think it is. If you take a look in GA and spot something that stands out, then you can work on solving that problem.

Where Engagement Fails

The next thing you need to look at is the behavioural patterns that stand out. For example, take a look at when people are abandoning your site.

Are they all leaving a shopping cart loaded with goods, never to complete the payment?

Or do they not get past your landing page?

Are they spending a lot of time on-page?

Are they particularly engaging with any page such as subscription sign-ups etc., where they spend plenty of time, but give up?

Figuring out where users are dropping off is a great clue.

Do they spend a lot of time looking around at images and reading text, but never taking action?
This is a very common issue for a website. Start off by looking at things like bounce rates, time spent per page unique visits per page etc., all of which you can find on GA or your equivalent stats page.

This can give you an instructive level of understanding about where you might be going wrong along the way. Do this, and you can find it much easier to start deciphering the problem. While it might not give you the solution, this will at least bring you a fair bit closer to finding a solution. So if you’re interested in spotting the problem yourself, look for patterns in your data.

So, What Causes a Lack Of Engagement?

Another good place to start solving the problem and putting out fires is to look at any on-site struggles people are having when they visit your website. By this, we mean take a look at issues like:

Website problems. If your site has links that don’t work and broken images, slow rendering and device/browser-specific issues, all of this matters. A site that performs poorly is like a customer repellant. If they need to wait more than 5s for the page to load quickly, they’ll go elsewhere. If they find that the site looks low-quality or is hard to navigate, they’ll move on without a second thought.

Marketing issues. Another issue could be more related to your marketing. From exclusive pricing and vague detail compared to your competitors, it’s easy to be shown up.

Trust matters, too. From SSL security to on-page reviews, testimonials and a contact page, it’s easy to build up trust, but not every business can (because not every business is great like yours!)

Lack of a clear sales pipeline will stop you from being able to market effectively; so, for example, not having a designated landing page will harm sales. Alternatively, sending repeat customers to your landing page isn’t a great idea either.

Of course, it could be a mixture of the above. Analyse your site and have a good think about which of these factors might be at play.

Something or Nothing?

Take a look at your sales volume. If you are at least getting some kind of sales, then it proves that something works right. So what is working? Is it just one or two pages? Or is it one particular section of each page? Or is it one or two particular products? Is this your first site? Or is another E-Commerce site of yours raking in big bucks, whereas one is a lame duck?

If you figure out what actually is working, then you can look to replicate that across the site. Perhaps the products/services that convert are converting because they stand out from the rest. Are the product descriptions more thoroughly detailed, perhaps? Is there a better quality photo, or better sales copy? There are many reasons that you need to consider. Try replicating your success across more pages, and see what happens!

Putting Success to the Test

Once you have gone through all of the above, you should have at least some idea of the problems affecting your site. You should take the time to look a bit closer about the general structure of your online business. Consider product testing, trying out specific products as your main leads and ‘hot sellers’ to try and find out if the description makes a big difference. Try out different descriptions and determine the response.

We also recommend contacting those who have made a purchase. Use it as an opportunity to survey them and pick their brains. Find out what they liked and disliked, and where you have made mistakes. This should make it much easier to help your customer show you where you are going right – and wrong.

Do this, and you can see a significant improvement in the way that your business operates. If you find that your conversions are down, using all of the above should help you get to the bottom of the problem– and sooner, rather than later, you’ll have a successful E-Commerce site on your hands!